Alice in wonderland on tour?

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I am new to ballet, enthusiast though. I have a very naive question about how ballet shows are organised: do ballet shows usually go on tour in different theatres? and where to get information about such tours? E.g.there is currently an "Alice in wonderland" by C. Wheeldon at the Royal Opera House in London. Will this ballet go on tour in other theatres? And how to get info on this?

Thanks for your help!

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Since the Royal Ballet is the first and only company to present this production -- at least so far -- your best bet is to go to its website and submit your question using the Contact Us link at the bottom of the screen.

Usually, the ballet company in conjunction with the management of the theater they're visiting mutually decide on what repertory to present. It depends on what ballets are currently in repertoire and which ones are expected to to sell a lot of tickets.

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It's a good many years since the Royal Ballet troupe based at Covent Garden toured in the UK although they do make visits overseas. So I think it unlikely that you can catch it anywhere but at the Royal Opera House and tickets for this six performance run have been sold out for months. I believe it will be shown again next season and it's always possible that it may be filmed in order to be shown on TV.

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Actually this particular ballet is some sort of co-production with the Canadian Ballet, but I don't know the details of how that is likely to work. Presumably Canadians are guaranteed seeing it in the near future.

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I am new to ballet, enthusiast though. I have a very naive question about how ballet shows are organised: do ballet shows usually go on tour in different theatres? and where to get information about such tours? E.g.there is currently an "Alice in wonderland" by C. Wheeldon at the Royal Opera House in London. Will this ballet go on tour in other theatres? And how to get info on this?

Thanks for your help!

Gippo,

The RB simply don't tour in the UK, they only tour internationally. There was talk and indeed movement to build a new opera house in Manchester to accommodate the RB, which died a death - which is hardly a surprise the idea was ridiculous but many of Tony Hall's "ideas" on how to make ballet a more catholic art form in the UK are depressingly out of touch with the majority of the UK's demographic and circumstances. This is a huge bone of contention in the UK arts, as the ROH is funded by public funds (as well as private) taxpayers money however they serve only UK and indeed given the price of the tickets (the highest of any lyric theatre in the world) just who they are serving which sectors of society is again questionable. Don't get me wrong I love ballet, but you have to turn a blind eye to the politics surrounding the deal the ROH gets compared to any other company in the UK.

Also touring domestically loses massive amounts of money, more so than touring internationally, major producers are interested in prestige events for a Hochauser the Met, the Mariinsky are viable business opportunities in prestige venues, the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Birmingham Hippodrome or Salfor Quays are not.

It is normal for a new three act to have a short run. If it bombed then the RB would lose millions had a long run been scheduled, it couldn't then replace performances with a Swan Lake or Giselle at the 11th hour and they'd been stuck with a turkey with limited seats sold. I read an arts admininstrator at ABT say that in order to schedule a new work you're looking at 80% Swan Lake scheduling to make it financially viable.

The RB claim that the event sold at almost 100%, I don't think it was quite the runaway success they're making out. The Telegraph was offering seats (at full price) for the whole of the run, also a blind phone call to the box office (or several blind phone calls I wanted to see it wasn't a one off) I was offered seats at all prices on several of the days.

How it works in co productions is that the National Ballet of Canada gets the production next, meaning the whole production will be shipped to Canada and Wheeldon or repetiteurs will stage the ballet in Toronto. It'll go back and forth as long as it makes money and people want to see it. If it bombs completely in Canada who knows they may just cut their losses and let the RB have it.